Late
by firstadream
Summary: "I'm late." "For what?" Castle/Beckett in the near-ish future.


She is so annoyed.

It started that morning when he woke her up thirty minutes before her alarm to have sex. _Thirty minutes. _He knew how late she'd gotten in the night before, knew she was exhausted because she'd _told _him, and yet there he was, sliding a hand over her hip, pressing sloppy kisses to her shoulder, rolling her towards him.

She'd almost said no. Almost. But then he did that thing with his mouth and his hands were in all the right places all at once and she supposed there were _worse _ways to be woken up at the crack of dawn.

Still. She's annoyed.

And now he's sitting next to her desk playing Angry Birds on his phone with the volume turned all the way up.

She spins her chair to face him.

"Castle." Nothing. "_Castle._" No answer.

He apparently can't hear her over the roar of victory and the obnoxious squawking of digital birds.

She kicks his shin with the pointed toe of her heel and he lets out a little yelp, almost dropping his phone as he reaches down to run his fingers over his kneecap.

"Ow," he whines. "What was that for?"

"If you're going to sit there all day being completely useless and playing pointless games on your iPhone, can you _at least_ have the courtesy to turn down the volume a little?"

He blinks at her, clearly taken aback by her sudden outburst. "Are you okay?" he asks.

She wants to punch him. Why does he always have to be so goddamned intuitive?

"I'm fine," she bites out, pulling her chair closer to her desk. "Just…try not to be so annoying."

"No promises," he says, but when he picks his phone back up the first thing he does is mute it.

—

For the rest of the day, nothing goes right. The case they're working on has no leads. None. She's apparently stumbled across the perfect murder, today of all days.

Castle, of course, is delighted and immediately goes to work cooking up scenarios involving elaborate government conspiracies, men in black, and highly trained ninjas. Usually she enjoys his wild theorizing, but today it only serves to annoy her even more.

He's just so _immature._ Like a kid in a candy store. Completely childish. She wonders how he ever managed to raise such a mature, self-possessed daughter. As she watches him draw diagrams of some sort of complex sting operation on the board while the boys stand by chuckling along, she decides that Alexis turning out the way she did is nothing short of a miracle.

She sighs, lets out a long breath, and turns back to her computer, hoping that maybe the forty-ninth time will be the charm for finding an inconsistency in the phone records of the victim.

She clicks on her mouse, but nothing happens. She clicks again, a little more forcefully. Still nothing. Her screen remains dark.

"You have got to be kidding me," she mutters under her breath.

She tries restarting it, but it doesn't help. Judging by the weird noises now coming from the hard drive, it seems to have made things worse. She lets out a frustrated groan, resisting the urge to pick up the damned thing and fling it across the bullpen. Or maybe empty a few rounds into the monitor.

Esposito turns towards her. "Everything okay, boss?"

"No," she says. "It's not. My computer died. It just _died_ and I need to look at the phone records again—"

"Well, hey, you could use mine—"

"And this fucking _case_," she continues, her voice rising over his. "It's ridiculous. What kind of murderer doesn't leave behind any evidence? It's impossible. It's completely _impossible_."

Castle steps forward at this point, abandoning his elaborate charts to reach for her. "Hey, Beckett, why don't we—"

She rounds on him. Stands from her chair and pokes him hard in the chest. "This is all your fault," she practically shouts at him. "If it wasn't for you, none of this would've happened. I would be alone and not annoyed and just…I'd be _fine._"

"Wait, Beckett, how is the computer breaking my fault?"

She pauses for a breath, realizing she must sound like a lunatic. "It's not about the computer, Castle," she groans, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. She hates that she snapped at him. She hates that she's basically losing it in front of the entire bullpen.

She's just so _frustrated_.

"What is it then?" he asks, gentle and understanding and she's so tired and confused and—

"It's about—"

She stops. Realizes she's about to cry and forces her mouth shut, but he sees it anyway, the way her eyes glaze over, the way her lower lip trembles no matter how brutally she clamps down on it.

She spins away from him and practically runs into the bathroom. He follows her. Pushes the door open and finds her standing in front of the mirror, regarding her own reflection with a deep weariness that makes him ache.

"Kate, what's going on?" he asks, stepping toward her cautiously.

She sighs, her eyes slipping shut. "Castle…"

"No, don't push me away," he says. "Just…_talk _to me. You've been distant all week. Why are you so angry?"

"I'm late."

"For what?"

She sighs again, turns to look at him. "No, Castle. I'm _late_."

Understanding dawns on his face slowly. "Oh." He swallows, his face unreadable. "How late?"

She runs a hand through her hair and crosses her arms over her chest. "Almost two weeks."

He nods slowly. Takes a hesitant step towards her. "Well, I mean…How-how do you feel about…that?"

"I'm terrified," she tells him honestly.

"Right, of course," he says softly and she's completely thrown off, because that actually sounded like hurt in his voice and maybe even…_disappointment?_

He drops his eyes to the floor and she finds herself reaching out towards him, snagging his hand and squeezing. "Castle, _hey_," she murmurs, "look at me."

He lifts his gaze to hers and she has to swallow hard, force it all down, this rising, overwhelming emotion, warm and surprising and almost like hope. It makes her heart thud and her breath catch because she realizes suddenly that she wants this, someday, but not today. Not now. They're not ready yet.

"You'd be happy, wouldn't you?" she asks, a little breathless with how much she loves him. "If this actually happened, you'd be happy."

He nods, his face so open, so in love, and she does cry then, lets the tears fall, the ones she's been holding back for almost two weeks.

He uses their still-linked hands to tug her closer, drawing her into his body, his lips pressed to her forehead and her cheek as she relaxes into him.

"I know it's not ideal timing," he murmurs, his lips at her ear. "But if you're pregnant, I'll be happy. I won't regret it."

She nods, tucks herself closer, presses her face into his neck and inhales the scent of his cologne, the scent she's come to associate with home, _their home_. "I won't either," she tells him, and she means it, even if her heart does pound a little harder at the prospect.

He pulls back a little, just enough to see her face. She leans close and kisses him softly. "I'm sorry I yelled at you," she whispers.

"It's okay," he says, smiling and kissing her again, a little deeper this time.

"Will you come to the store with me?" she asks.

He nods. "Of course."

—

He holds her hand as they walk into the CVS. They find the aisle quickly. There is almost an entire shelf dedicated to pregnancy tests. She stares at all the pinks and purples and blues, smiling mothers and plus signs, feeling shell-shocked and completely out of her depth.

Castle moves a little closer, close enough that she can feel his chest against her back, his hands resting gently at her waist.

"Do you…do you think it matters which one we choose?" she asks.

"Probably not," he says, reaching past her shoulder to snag the nearest box. "They all do the same thing, right?"

She nods. "Right."

She takes the box from him and stares at it. She has never felt so completely muddled in her entire life. She's torn between hope and fear and is honestly not sure which one is winning out at this point.

"It's expensive," she comments inanely.

"Kate."

"Fifteen bucks to find out your fate."

"_Kate_."

She closes her eyes. Lets the hand holding the test fall to her side. She turns away from him slightly, presses trembling fingers over her eyes. "I, um…"

"C'mere," he murmurs, his voice low.

She lets him turn her body towards him, lets him pull her close. "I don't know…" She trails off. Realizes she doesn't really have an ending to that sentence, so she says it again. "I don't know."

And she doesn't know. She doesn't know anything.

"I love you," he says softly, his voice steady and low, cutting through some of the white noise in her brain, because that's something she does know, a touchstone, a truth she can hold onto.

"I love you, too," she tells him.

The words still rock her a little, a thunderclap of recognition every time she says them, because it's true. She means it. She loves him and she can say it now.

He kisses the smooth skin at her temple and she melts into him a little. He's so sturdy and strong and she lets him hold her up for a minute, just a minute, before she takes a step back.

"I'm ready."

—

They use the bathroom in the store, partly because they don't want to risk suspicion at the precinct and partly because she can't bear the thought of waiting any longer.

The test is resting on the edge of the sink and she's pacing in front of it while he leans against the wall, waiting quietly.

By the time the timer on her phone goes off, she's practically beside herself with anticipation, vibrating with it. She glances warily at the stick, about to reach for it, but then she stops and turns to him.

"I want to have a baby with you," she blurts out.

He pushes off from the wall and closes the space between them. Kisses her hard, his hands curling at her waist. She lifts into it blindly, lifts her arms around his neck and parts her mouth. His tongue slides against hers immediately, searching and insistent and she can't help but moan softly.

He pulls away a moment later, his eyes intent on her face. "I want to have a baby with you, too," he says.

She presses a palm to his chest, just over his heart. "You're a good father," she murmurs.

He smiles at that, kisses her again, gentle and insistent. "And you're going to be a wonderful mother."

He reaches past her and picks up the test, holding it between them. She looks at it, lets it settle inside her.

"Negative," she murmurs.

She's not quite sure how she feels about that. There's relief, yes, but also disappointment. She would've been okay with it, she realizes. She would've been okay if there had been a plus sign instead and that, more than anything, is what gets her, what snags in her chest.

"You okay?" he asks gently.

She nods, because she is, but leans into him anyway, presses a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I'm okay."

He smiles softly. "Someday," he breathes, a promise of sorts.

"Someday," she agrees.

—

_I read some article somewhere (TV guide maybe?) that mentioned Castle and Beckett having a baby someday now that they're a couple, and it got me thinking about how that conversation might go. I'm writing another fic where they actually are having a baby, but I just couldn't stop thinking about how it might actually come up in the show, what might spark the talk._

_ Anyway. Hope you liked it!_


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